


fearless child, broken boy

by Ingi



Series: Author's Favorites [6]
Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Light Angst, POV Howl Pendragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 12:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ingi/pseuds/Ingi
Summary: Howl remembers:That summer's midnight sky. The falling stars. How everything around him was burning and he knew he was supposed to be afraid but he wasn't, hewasn't, and his hands felt so cold. Flames down his throat.





	fearless child, broken boy

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo... I finally saw Howl's Moving Castle and this happened, somehow? Yeah, I don't know either. Let's just go with it.

Howl remembers:

That summer's midnight sky. The falling stars. How everything around him was burning and he knew he was supposed to be afraid but he wasn't, he _wasn't_ , and his hands felt so cold. Flames down his throat.

Later, much later, but still in the beginning, he'll meet many who will tell him _What a brave, selfless boy; he saw fire being extinguished and burned himself from the inside out to keep it alive_. It makes for such a good story, and Howl has always had a soft spot for those. But the truth isn't, as it often happens, so pink-colored. A boy was standing alone in the middle of an empty field and saw fire being extinguished, and he cared not that it was a demon, and he cared not about what he would become, he only wanted to consume and be consumed in turn to quieten the loneliness in his bones, the dullness of him.

Then the fire was in his fists, and his chest was empty, and it was _better_.

Later still, Howl will slither into the villagers' homes like mist and he will hear whispered _But how could he do it? What about the emptiness?_ And Howl would never do this, of course, but if he ever felt so inclined, he could tell them that one of the many reasons he did it was to see if he _could_. He clawed his chest open and fully expected to find nothing there. But there was, there was a heart there indeed, and then Howl took it out and most of the ache remained, and nothing else changed.

He does not eat hearts, he'd like to make that very clear.

It's all metaphorical. Mostly. What would he want a heart for? His never seemed to have any use, after all. There are maidens that offer theirs anyway, because there always are, and he takes them and squeezes the dreams out of them, all the illusions they burn to keep themselves alive, and with those he makes potions to turn his hair into light and his eyes into the summer sky.

He stares at himself in the mirror and finds only a stranger. But it's a very dashing one, not plain and boring and loveless at all, so he keeps looking.

 

 

Howl forgets:

His uncle's proud smile, back when it mattered. The taste of sweet peaches on his tongue. A dull, lonely boy in a field, staring up at the sky with the world's most painful hope reflected in his eyes.

Everything else, he never had it to begin with.

 

 

Curses aren't like blessings.

You don't have to be looking for them to find them. Rather, they find you, trip you, and laugh when you faceplant into the dirt. Or maybe that's taking the metaphor too far. It happens, sometimes.

Howl takes in a child who has no mother or father or anyone to speak for him, who steals bread from the market and makes potions in the mud after a rainy day, tears and hair and pebbles, a finger for a spoon.

Howl takes in an old woman who isn't such, who sometimes tricks the world into cowering and makes him want to stretch out his fingers and _take_ like he already did once, but he knows better now.

Howl takes in an enemy. Howl takes in a dog. Howl takes in a scarecrow.

Howl is starting to realize that curses aren't the only things that come without calling. He has a _family_ now, much too late, and there's not a single member in it that is genuine, but unlike what happens with him, that's not by any fault of theirs.

He's older than dirt, older than the ground beneath his feet, as old as Calcifer at least, and that's very old indeed. The witch's eyes pierce his back when she thinks he isn't aware of it, and Markl still laughs in joy even under his half-fake beard, and Sophie's appearance keeps flickering. The dog chases invisible bugs out of the house. The scarecrow never sits still.

And he's dead behind the mask.

 

 

"I don't know what they were expecting," Calcifer says. "Naming a baby Howl. _Really_."

"It's a perfectly serviceable name," Howl replies.

He keeps throwing logs into the fire, and cloth and meat and _everything_ , but he's still starving. He's always starving.

"Are you still howling, Howl?" Calcifer goes on, undeterred. "Will you ever stop? Have you _ever_ stopped?"

And Howl would like to say that Calcifer has no idea of what he's talking about, but the truth is- he's a demon. He knows all about howling. And he knows even more about Howl's heart.

He did eat it, after all.

 

 

The war keeps going and Howl is a monster, but it doesn't really matter, in the great scheme of things.

He shakes his feathers off, and it's harder and harder each day. The thing is, he's not entirely sure of how much of him is himself and how much is Calcifer. Shapeshifting is no joke. The witch used to be so beautiful and so _big_ , she was overflowing in her own body, she was young and fascinating and no one could ever look away from her. And then Markl, with his beard and his perpetual frown, too many years in the streets turning his boyish heart wrinkled.

So where does that leave Howl, Howl of the black wings and sharp claws?

Calcifer might or might not have an answer, but he stares at Howl in silence after he asks and all he says is _Bird heart_.

Howl would've never called his other form a bird. Monster suits him better.

It seems that not even demons know everything, after all.

 

 

If he lets Sophie in his secret field is not because he's planning to leave.

The first and last decision in his life was choosing to eat that fallen star. Everything else, he's being dragged along for the ride. But he does know where he'll go, or part of it anyway, and once, so very long ago, there was a boy in that field and Howl used to hate him, and now there's only pity left.

Not even that boy deserves to be forgotten.

So he takes Sophie to the field. And then, slowly sliding into his thoughts without any hurry or fear, comes a memory.

And Howl remembers:

_I know how to help you now! Find me in the future!_

And he doesn't smile. But it's a close thing.

 

 

It's like _breathing_ again.

His chest is too heavy and precious now, and he feels like a child, his little boy heart cradled inside his ribcage after so long. He wonders if it'll hurt when it grows. He wonders if that's why it hurts now, his poor soft heart, too small for an adult, too small for anyone, but far too big for someone like him. Calcifer has flown away now and he's too afraid to try and feel the magic in his fingertips, but he has a heart that keeps fluttering like a bird and Sophie's arms are around him, and his hair is still black like the form he doesn't know if he'll ever have again, and it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. He's not hungry anymore.

"You look human now," Calcifer observes, when he returns. "I wasn't sure you still were one."

"Am I?" Howl asks, and Calcifer flickers in doubt, shifts restlessly in his hearth.

"Does the back of your mouth taste like ashes?"

Howl's tongue strokes it to feel whatever's left of Sophie's taste, the peaches they were eating earlier, his joy at the satiety that came after and at being able to sit there with Sophie against his chest and not wanting to reach over and _take_. There are many ways of owning a heart, Howl has learned, and only one of them involves swallowing it down.

"Why did you come back?" he says instead, to Calcifer, caring not that it's already been answered.

"You love her," Calcifer replies, irritated. "You love them. You took my fire and became half-monster, I took your heart and became-"

"Do you love me?" Howl interrupts him.

His little boy heart could bring him to his knees right now. He stays standing because his body is old and knows better.

There's only the sizzling of the fire for a while. Sophie's laughter in the background, Markl yelling something Howl does not care to focus on for now, the dog barking. In Howl's mind, a boy in a field turns and waits, the world's gentlest hope in his eyes.

Calcifer huffs and disappears under a log, and in that moment, Howl can hear himself and that weight in his chest cracking, falling- And then, in the wood, a single word slowly takes shape, burnt with fire demon magic so deep that it shakes.

 _Yes_.

And somewhere, in a field under a clear summer sky, a boy smiles.

 

 


End file.
